Of all the toys I’ve received lately for review — and there are quite a few — probably the hardest to take a long look at it is Playmates’ Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles T-Sprints line.
Playmates has provided ComicBook.com with a copy of the Sewer Duel playset (pictured above) as well as a number of the T-Sprints themselves, and they’re a really cool idea.
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I, however, am a middle-aged man who doesn’t actually collect many toys. My son, who is age-appropriate for the T-Sprints, is autistic and has a developmental delay pertaining to fine motor skills.
Neither of us, as you can imagine, are all that good at toys that you have to rev up, let go up a long path, and then drop into a car and drive away.
That’s the thing, here: the T-Sprints — which you can check out at most toy stores, although to get the playset pictured above it seems you have to actually go there rather than shopping online — are a great idea whose execution is impressive, but they’re a little daunting.
You look at even the $5.99 toys that come with one Ninja Turtles character and a little vehicle, and there’s no clear place to put the toy. The vehicle is basically just a frame, and the way you get it to move in a semi-straight line is that you rev up the toy, drop it into the stationary vehicle, and a little nub on the Turtle’s belt connects to an indentation in the vehicle’s steering wheel.
Here’s the thing, though: if you’re doing it wrong, it’s probably because you’re overthinking it. In spite of the fact that none of the T-Sprints toys look like they should work, they actually do if you just kind of say “Ah, hell with it,” and drop them into the car or onto the track while the revved-up toy is moving at speed.
You can check out a gallery of the playset — which retails for $14.99, or you can get one on eBay for about twice that — below.
